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Photo, Print, Drawing Proclamation. In the Name of the Republic. We, Etienne Polverel and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Civil Officers of the Republic, Whom the French Nation Sent to this Country to Establish Law and Order. Proclamation. Au nom de la République. Nous Etienne Polverel et Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Commissaires civils de la République, que Nacion Française voyé dans pays-ci pour metté l'ordre & tranquillité tout-par-tout

About this Item

Title

  • Proclamation. In the Name of the Republic. We, Etienne Polverel and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Civil Officers of the Republic, Whom the French Nation Sent to this Country to Establish Law and Order.

Other Title

  • Proclamation. Au nom de la République. Nous Etienne Polverel et Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Commissaires civils de la République, que Nacion Française voyé dans pays-ci pour metté l'ordre & tranquillité tout-par-tout

Summary

  • The broadside presented here is a rare copy of the official Creole text, translated from the French, of a proclamation issued in the colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) granting freedom to enslaved women and to the children of newly emancipated slaves. The articles describe the procedures by which slaves could be married and the laws that governed the status of women and children after marriage. The document also specifies the value of women and of children of both sexes by age and thereby the amount of indemnity to be paid to their masters. The translation into Creole was a radical step, taken so that the slaves might know exactly what rights they had under the proclamation. In August 1791, slaves in Saint-Domingue staged a massive revolt, setting in train the chain of events that ultimately led to the founding of independent Haiti in 1804. In 1792, the de facto government of revolutionary France sent Etienne Polverel and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax as civil commissioners to the colony for the purpose of enforcing a decree by the National Assembly enfranchising free blacks and mulattoes, but that did not yet free the colony's slaves. Under growing pressure from the revolt and threatened by invading British forces, on August 29, 1793, Sonthonax issued a decree freeing the slaves in the northern part of the colony, for which he was responsible. Polverel followed two weeks later with a proclamation freeing all slaves in the west. The proclamation presented here was issued by both Polverel and Sonthonax-- in the name of the French Republic. The document is from Les imprimés à Saint-Domingue (Imprints from Saint-Dominique), a collection held by the Bibliothèque Haïtienne des Pères du Saint-Esprit that includes approximately 150 texts printed in Saint-Domingue before independence in 1804. The books were produced between 1764 and 1804 at presses in Cap-Français, Port-au-Prince, and Les Cayes and were digitized in 2006 with the support of the L'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF).

Names

  • Polverel, Étienne, 1738-1795 Author.
  • Sonthonax, Léger-Félicité, 1763-1813 Author.

Created / Published

  • Port-au-Prince : J-B. Michel Printing House, 1793-05-05.

Headings

  • -  France
  • -  Haiti
  • -  1793-05-05
  • -  Antislavery movements
  • -  Broadsides
  • -  Civil rights
  • -  France--Colonies
  • -  Marriage law
  • -  Proclamations
  • -  Slavery
  • -  Slavery -- Law and legislation

Notes

  • -  Title devised, in English, by Library staff.
  • -  Original resource extent: 1 page.
  • -  Reference extracted from World Digital Library: Nick Nesbitt, Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the Radical Enlightenment (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008). http://islandluminous.fiu.edu/part02-slide03.html. External
  • -  Original resource at: National Archives of Haiti.
  • -  Content in Haitian.
  • -  Description based on data extracted from World Digital Library, which may be extracted from partner institutions.

Medium

  • 1 online resource.

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2021670755

Online Format

  • compressed data
  • pdf
  • image

Additional Metadata Formats

IIIF Presentation Manifest

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Credit Line: [Original Source citation], World Digital Library

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Polverel, Étienne, Author, and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax. Proclamation. In the Name of the Republic. We, Etienne Polverel and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Civil Officers of the Republic, Whom the French Nation Sent to this Country to Establish Law and Order. Haiti France, 1793. Port-au-Prince: J-B. Michel Printing House, -05-05. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670755/.

APA citation style:

Polverel, É. & Sonthonax, L. (1793) Proclamation. In the Name of the Republic. We, Etienne Polverel and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Civil Officers of the Republic, Whom the French Nation Sent to this Country to Establish Law and Order. Haiti France, 1793. Port-au-Prince: J-B. Michel Printing House, -05-05. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670755/.

MLA citation style:

Polverel, Étienne, Author, and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax. Proclamation. In the Name of the Republic. We, Etienne Polverel and Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, Civil Officers of the Republic, Whom the French Nation Sent to this Country to Establish Law and Order. Port-au-Prince: J-B. Michel Printing House, -05-05. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2021670755/>.